


walking on a string

by swordfishtrombones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Early Relationship, M/M, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28459857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordfishtrombones/pseuds/swordfishtrombones
Summary: Between the doomed offensive at the Firmament and the impending retreat from the ravaged northeast border, Castiel left camp long enough to answer one of Dean Winchester's prayers.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 155





	walking on a string

Between the doomed offensive at the Firmament and the impending retreat from the ravaged northeast border, Castiel left camp long enough to answer one of Dean Winchester's prayers.

Dean's prayers had continued without appreciable respite for weeks. He sent equally expectant calls regarding trouble both pressing and mundane, half the time pinning _Cas, I’ve never asked you for anything_ to the end, as if Castiel hadn’t heard or couldn’t remember the last dozen times. In a thrice-warded hideout beneath San Francisco, Cas argued strategy with Crowley, ignoring Dean Winchester’s snide complaints about some insignificant heavenly weapon washed up on the shores of Lake Huron; in Oὐρανός, Cas held a burning blade above his head and brought it down against Raphael’s steel-eyed faithful over the furious roar of Dean shouting for someone with wings to swoop down and pluck his brother from a Kelpie’s watery cliffside cave. Time moved differently on Earth. Once Castiel dragged himself from the battlefield with one request still ringing in his ears, Dean was back with another.

Dean was demanding and childish when he wanted to be, and Castiel’s willingness to indulge him changed with the phases of the moons, and with the phases of the Crowley situation. But then Dean called during a rare lull, in the humiliating quietude that preceded a retreat, and Castiel was worn and useless enough to feel justified dropping himself into a Motel 6.

There had been a series of drownings along the Scioto River. Dean had left his brother in Portsmouth and driven up to Columbus alone, the two of them stationed at hot spots across the ninety-one miles where forty-two sober and successful human beings had lost their lives inside of two months. 

“It’s Kharon,” Castiel confirmed wearily, vessel heavy in the motel’s stained armchair. This was deeply arbitrary, but it would be impossible to explain without dredging up questions better kept buried. “When the portal opened it left the river Styx clogged with debris. He needed an alternate passage. I suppose we all must find ways to do our duties, even amid challenges and distractions.”

"Don't give me that shit," Dean said. He was leaning against the TV stand in a black t-shirt, gone faded around the collar and armpits. It was cool in Columbus, and Dean’s arms were prickled with goosebumps, but he had left his jacket tossed across the bed’s quilted throw. "From where I'm standing seems like you ignore distractions just fine."

"Dean." Cas put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. He was tired. Dean had not responded to the confirmation of Kharon’s presence, which made Castiel suspect it was not information he needed. "I am fighting a war. I cannot be here with you.”

Dean crossed his arms across his chest, petulant, flexing in a way Castiel knew he thought was subtle. “So why’d you bother making the trip.”

“I need a brief reprieve.” Shameful to say, the implicit acknowledgement of a desire so thick it ran like need. “A day or two.”

“Is that right. What happened to remembering the Alamo?”

Cas frowned. “I do remember the Alamo. Although your people seem to have trouble with that story.”

“I’m sayin’, last time I saw you all you could talk about was hightailing it back to ground zero.”

“Rachel is extremely competent.” The retreat would be uncontested. It was what Raphael wanted and expected. The resulting loss of morale would be the real issue, but that would be solved by the influx of souls. “I can be spared for a day. Two days.”

Dean made a considering face. Turned to the TV stand where he’d left a bottle of something and poured a finger into one of the motel’s complimentary plastic cups. When he turned back he was grinning, that sharp and dark-eyed smile, sharklike charm, blood in the water. “Alrighty then,” he said, and drained the cup. “How you gonna spend summer vacation?”

There was, of course, no question what they would do. The same thing they had done a month prior in Bobby’s panic room, when Dean had been so afraid of making noises that he tried to tell Cas a hand clamped tight over the mouth was part of what made it good. Cas doubted that very much, but doubt came with every inch of the territory.

He got Dean down on the scratchy throw, hands clamped around his hips. Dean bucked against the pressure, but Cas had an idea the restraint was what made the movement enjoyable, relief after all that open road. Dean pushed down Cas’s trench coat, ripped off his tie and both of their shirts, shamelessly eager. Tore open his own fly. Dean’s cock free against his stomach, flushed and resplendent. He thrashed violently under Cas until Cas pinned him with one hand on his hip and one around both his wrists, and then Dean went still at once, as if that was all he wanted. It wasn’t true—Dean made them pause to dig a packet of lubricant from a pocket on the interior of his jacket, and Castiel soothed himself with the notion that they both kept secrets.

It wouldn’t be long until the duplicity became clear and Dean would put an end to this. Some things were inevitable. Impossible to think of, though, when he was pressing his forehead against Dean’s and bringing them together. Scorchingly hot, clumsy at first, Dean’s breath fast and ragged beneath him. 

When they were like this the air between them felt clouded, heat waves of history that Castiel hadn’t seen. Dean had thought himself a man and a protector all his life, but explain, then, what Castiel knew. That once there had been one of two lost strays, wound up tightly, hurt and snapping at the world. That, like Andromeda, Dean and his blood were born for the altar, and the plan was disrupted only when Dean looked sidelong and saw something different. 

The feeling overcame him unbearably. Cas put his hand on Dean's face, and, seeking his own relief, murmured from the depths of himself, "Little one." Dean, who had been groaning and gnashing against Cas’s neck, made a face and burst into rough laughter. This was not Cas's aim, but he had learned by now that laughing did not mean it was over, that laughter could be part of it.

There were lovers in the world who engaged in this act and thought of destiny. Castiel held Dean’s wrists to the mattress and thrust into him, the crown of Dean’s head against the bars of the headboard, and thought of choice. 

“So how do we gank Kharon,” Dean asked from the bathroom doorway afterwards, the same shirt and jeans pulled over his body, talking around a toothbrush.

“I would not advise it.” Cas had not yet motivated himself to move from the bed. After they finished he felt a tiredness that was delicious instead of painful, probably part of what made it so addictive. You ruined yourself, showered, put yourself back together. A little rebirth over and over. “Kharon has an important task. If you kill him the souls won’t be saved, just lost.”

Dean took his toothbrush out of mouth. “Purgatory?”

Castiel shrugged, a put-on human gesture. He was wondering already what it would mean to bring Kharon to Crowley. The navigator would be a uniquely promising lead. 

“Hm.” Dean leaned out of view and spat into the sink. “One vote do nothing, one vote gank. Sammy can be the tie-breaker.” He leaned back and flashed Cas an unconcerned grin. “I’m on the edge of my seat.”

In the evening they went out for burgers, Castiel sitting in the passenger seat because Dean insisted company was the whole point. Dean hummed and drummed his fingers on the wheel as he drove, relaxed happiness radiating from him and warming the car’s whole interior.

Castiel looked at Dean’s hand and thought about it on his chest and in his mouth. It was a bewildering adjustment of scale. Above them Raphael’s untethered energy was flooding Heaven, doing what it could to cover the sky. But inside the Impala, condensation on the windshield was gathering into glittering beads, outshining the layered stars. Castiel squeezed his own hand, looking at Dean’s, and attempted the mental exercise of imagining the two versions of himself coming together and being the same. 

Dean ate the burgers sitting on the hood of the car outside the motel room, back in his jacket now that he had less to prove. 

“Should you be hunting?” Cas asked beside him, hands pressed to the cold metal. He would steer Dean from the hunt if possible, save Kharon for someone who had use of him.

Dean swallowed his bite, smirking. “I did the research. Last death was down ’round Lucasville. Sam’s gotta start pulling his weight sooner or later.”

Castiel peered up at the stars. Cepheus was in the sky, watching them through centuries of bloody betrayal. “Do you really think,” he said slowly, “that Sam should be working alone?”

A pause. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, not long ago you would have been afraid to let him out of your sight. Your brother has always possessed a degree of brutality. And for such a sensitive operation—”

Dean was shaking his head. “Cas, no.”

“Something to consider.”

“He’s _better.”_

“I’ve made you angry.”

Dean wiped his greasy fingers on the empty paper bag and crumpled it in his fist. “Just do me a favor. Next twenty-four hours, however long you’re down here, you keep his name outta your mouth.”

Cas swallowed. “I apologize.”

“Forget it.” Dean put his fist up to Cas’s jaw, knocked it gently to the side. Leaned in. Gave him a taste of salt.

They hadn’t done that much, much less in an open space, although Cas thought it might be his favorite thing. Every warm and yielding place on Dean’s body fit his mouth so easily, all the places where the blood flowed quickest. He could bask in that heat. Radiant like power and the sky, but immediate, mammalian, embodied. Cas put his hand on Dean’s wrist where he’d held him earlier, coaxing his fingers under the sleeve of Dean’s jacket to feel the soft hair on his arm. Each version of Castiel could follow this through line. They’d meet in the middle, between the light of God and Dean Winchester’s sweet hot blood. 

Dean broke away from Cas’s mouth and gave him half a smile which Cas couldn’t return, could only drop his chin and try to tell Dean with his eyes that he understood what he was being offered. The scale of time had been reworked, and Cas was willing to fall in step. He would build them a history in all the vast nothingness, construct a foundation for trust, protect it for as long as Dean would allow. The war would end, and then they would have years and years. Time enough to make amends, and then time enough to earn an unshakeable shared past.

Dean seemed content to forget the hunt for a while, which suited Cas fine. The next day they partook in the act three times, which Cas took as remarkable from the expression on Dean's face, although it shouldn't have been. It was never the same twice. There was a new function to each occurrence: the first time energetic and urgent, a vital expression of desire; the second an exploration, a practice in variation, an appreciation for possibility; and the third slow and warm and aimless, somehow deeper, replete with entirely new sensations. Each ending could be a new beginning, but in the evening Dean finally groaned and pushed Cas off of him, complaining that the room stank and he was hungry and should at least make the gesture of typing Kharon’s name into a search engine.

The morning after that, Sam drove an illegally rented car up along the river and knocked on the motel door. 

Sam hugged Dean in the doorway, locking eyes with Cas over his brother’s shoulder. “Hey Cas,” he said, voice tilting upward, but he was speaking to Dean, the two of them having one of their silent conversations in a language Castiel didn’t speak.

“Hello Sam.” He stood from the armchair. They had cracked the windows, but in all likelihood the scent of the room went far beyond their own activity. 

Dean thumped Sam on the shoulder. “All gucci?” 

“One less morbid ferryman.”

Castiel froze. Made himself relax. “You Winchesters. There are times when total annihilation is not the most practical solution.”

Dean tilted his head. “Yeah, well, not this time, Arlo.”

Sam twisted his mouth. For all Castiel had said about Sam, at least he had a productive sense of shame. “Hey Dean,” Sam said. “Grab me a Coke.”

“Get your own Coke,” Dean said perfunctorily, and went to the door.

Sam sat down at the foot of the bed and started pulling off his shoes, yawning. “Man,” he said conversationally, “that drive was not scenic.”

Cas remained standing. “Are you concerned about your brother?”

Sam smiled at his boots, loosening the laces. “Figure at this point he can kinda take care of himself.”

There was something Cas wanted to say, but the words were so inadequate. Understandable, the desire to communicate without such inelegant parts. “If I had the choice,” he said slowly, “perhaps I would take him from you. You can comfort yourself with the knowledge that I do not.”

Sam looked up at him, smile falling. “You think I’m worried about that?”

All he did these days, fight with a heavy hand and then attempt with that same hand to delicately recalibrate for the benefit of the Winchesters. 

“I only mean,” he tried again, “the situation in Heaven is… precarious. And will likely become more so. Dean belongs to the Earth. There is the possibility he will be hurt, but that is not my intention.”

“Huh.” Sam leaned back and looked at him, mouth slightly open and eyebrows raised. “I guess that’s the best any of us can do.”

Castiel found Dean in the alley with the ice and vending machines, eating a packet of something bright orange as he watched two squirrels chase each other around the parking lot. 

“You headin’ out?”

“I’m needed in Heaven. There’s trouble outside the Empyrean.” There had been trouble outside the Empyrean for hours. Rachel would be shaken and furious at being left to handle it alone. 

“Get the big guy back upstairs.” Dean hit Cas’s chest lightly with the back of his hand. “I get it.” 

“Dean.” Any day now. Any day and Dean would know everything, and they would have to begin again from the rubble. “It may be a time before you see me next.”

Dean made a face into the snack bag. Tilted his head back and shook the crumbs into his mouth.

Furtive lovers used to carry miniatures of their beloveds’ eyes, unmistakable once known, but anonymous to a stranger. Some still carried locks of hair clasped in pendants, but that seemed a risky request. He would have to leave Dean with a word and a touch, carrying the same with him through battle and whatever came after. 

Cas put his hand on the side of Dean’s neck and fit their mouths together, the plastic bag Dean held crinkling between them. Dean pulled back quickly, a hand on Cas’s chest, looking over his shoulder. 

A word would have to do, then. Something honest and right, something to say that Dean had made the brave choice by growing into the man he had become, and that someone else was there to bear witness. That when God carved humanity it was with faith that soft earth could transmute into something imperfect, but tender and whole, and that for every other error, in that moment He had done right. Cas clutched Dean’s shoulder. “You’re a good man,” he said.

Dean gave a ludicrous snort. “Yeah, your brain’s still fuck-scrambled. Better get back to the divine choir.”

It was agony to love someone who didn’t know themselves. Castiel knew much that Dean didn’t, but soon that knowledge would destroy the best thing he had ever touched. If he was fortunate, Dean might remember this nonetheless, recognize Cas’s wish to give him honesty where possible. Dean might even catch moments of understanding—how the situation had weighed upon him, and how preferable was the warmth of earth and flesh to righteous bugles and flames. 

Cas released Dean’s shoulder. He sheathed himself in wings, turned to face the open sky, and went to join a different force of light. 

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe this. title stolen directly from [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a17sJFSSds&ab_channel=MattBerningerVEVO) i put it on repeat and then had the absolute time of my fucking life writing this thing in basically one sitting without a single conscious thought entering my brain while some other repressed part of myself took over. thank you ofc to [orestesfasting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orestesfasting/pseuds/orestesfasting) for editing! happy new year, hope you all have a great 2013.


End file.
